Watching the New Star Wars Trailer With 8 Year Old Me

Brian Batty 12/3/14

J.J. Abrams and the people attempting the impossible task of filling the trough from which the Star Wars fans eat with something satisfactory were in an interesting position with this first look at the new Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. No matter what they put in the trailer they knew the internet would immediately turn into the first five rows at a Skrillex concert when bass drops. They could have just done a slow pan over the Tatooine desert of nothing but sand for 60 seconds, and it would’ve still gotten 15,000 Youtube comments worth of discussion. Releasing any content from the much anticipated Episode VII is the equivalent of finishing a lay-up during pre-game warm-ups.

But still, this was awesome. For a minute and thirty seconds of bliss, I de-morphed into a blob of eight year old me and twenty five year old me wishing I were still eight years old again. Fortunately for twenty-five year old me, I’ve learned the lesson of not letting trailers get me too worked-up any more. Nobody lies more often than a movie trailer. Watch the trailer for Episode I, and take away your knowledge of the dumpster fire that ensued, and you can be hoodwinked into thinking what we all thought in 1999, “Any Star Wars is great Star Wars”.

Well we all know what really happened, and I honestly don’t really want to talk about it. I’d prefer to pretend those awful movies never existed. We’ve all been fooled by an amazing movie trailer before (I thought Pineapple Express was going to be the single greatest movie ever made, and it turned out to be the single most average movie ever made), and hopefully this one matches enormous expectations.

But I wonder if I channeled eight year old Brian, what he would think of this all. Well luckily my next door neighbor has a Delorean, so I cranked it up to 88 and brought eight year old me to 2014 to watch the trailer and got his thoughts.

Eight Year Old Me: Wait, the storm troopers are people? I thought they were just robots Darth Vader made out of all the people they killed. And what’s that guy scared of? He’s a Storm Trooper!

Twenty Five Year Old Me: Alright so let’s start this thing off with a shocked Storm Trooper on Luke’s home planet of Tatooine. Looks like Google maps wasn’t working too well for this guy because he looks lost, big time. There is nothing at all around him, I can’t possibly understand how he ended up there. Maybe this is part of Storm Trooper training, kind of like how they drop off still groggy Navy Seal hopefuls 15 miles into an ocean and tell them “swim home” without any direction. Whoever is running the Empire right now must just drop these guys off in the middle of Tatooine with a half full water canteen and say “get home”. They aren’t messing around this time.

Eight Year Old Me: I hope they come out with an R2-D2 soccer video game for my N 64!

Twenty Five Year Old Me: So looks like after thirty years R2 really got into soccer like the rest of this country. I bet he’s a Man U fan. He was definitely in the crown that watched the World Cup games at a droid bar wearing Tatooine colors from head to toe. 100% guarantee C3-PO is the last droid picked in droid gym class for every sport. There’s no way he isn’t the most unathletic droid in his class. I had a couple 3PO’s in my gym classes growing up and I always felt bad for them, they just had no chance.

Eight Year Old Me: WHERE’S HAN SOLO!??!?!

Twenty Five Year Old Me: Looks like the Storm Troopers got some upgraded suits. Hopefully they spent an equal amount of money on target practice. Because if they are still as bad at shooting lasers as they used to be, the empire has no chance. Last time they had to deal with the rebels they may as well have been shooting those blasters blindfolded. How much residual damage do you think the first Death Star take just from their soldiers shooting everything besides the target? Luke, Han, and Leia should have just kept running around the place not even trying to escape, the whole place would have self destructed from friendly fire.

Eight Year Old Me: Why is Princess Leia driving a giant rectangle in the desert?

Twenty Five Year Old Me: Why is this woman driving a giant red flash drive in the desert?

Eight Year Old Me: Vrooooommmmmmmm! Pewww pewww pewww!

Twenty Five Year Old Me: They’re still using the X-wings, which clearly means in thirty years rebel technology hasn’t increased one bit. You’d think after all that time, they would update their main attack force a bit. In the same way I hope the Empire learned better aim, I hope the rebellion didn’t just stop progressing after winning the biggest battle in the universe all those years ago. Like a college football team winning national championships running the option in the 80s, and then still going through the futile process of running the same option they used too with no results.

Eight Year Old Me: Mom can I get a lightsaber with mini lightsabers on the handle for Christmas??!?!

Twenty Five Year Old Me: Now I know this is is exciting. The editors of this trailer knew exactly what they were doing here. They got the reaction of “holy crap, what’s that for?” that they were going for. But let’s all remember what happened last time got a glimpse of new lightsaber technology. We got Darth Maul, the single most disappointing villain in movie history. I remember when I saw it the first time, how excited I was at the prospect of a guy wearing a bunch of face paint using a double sided lightsaber. Turns out he was just a snarling dude who died three movies too early.